Part 1 – Introduction

It hasn’t been easy to articulate my thoughts and feelings about this documentary and the controversy that continues to engulf it in a myriad of ‘debunking’ blogs, fan theories and a general apprehension about its credibility.  I am not a writer, journalist or even a regular blogger, I am just an ordinary person who does ordinary things and lives an ordinary life but this subject, particularly in recent weeks, has pretty much engulfed my every thought, feeling and emotion so I feel compelled to write to the World about how it has made me feel. The vilification of the two abusers involved in Leaving Neverland has invoked a sentiment within me that I’ve never experienced and after careful consideration for my own mental well-being, I decided that my personal vulnerabilities were low-ranking on the broader scale. These thoughts and reflections are based solely on my opinion and research I have carried out myself on material that is factual, circumstantial, or fuelled by other people’s opinions both for and against the argument that Michael Jackson was, indeed, a perpetrator of child sexual abuse despite being legally exonerated from these charges. Everything I speak about in this piece is based on allegations and not convictions, the latter of which there are none. I won’t post links to other websites, articles, videos or social media posts, I will leave it up to you, the reader, to do your own research, although I will steer you towards some internet searches. I warn you now though, this is a long blog, so if you don’t make it to the end I wouldn’t blame you.

I will start from the beginning of my journey so that I can begin to build the picture of how I arrived at this point right now, bearing in mind that Leaving Neverland was originally broadcast back in 2019. When I first watched the documentary, my initial reaction was sadness, disgust, and empathy for the two accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, but I can’t say I was overwhelmingly surprised. I was a huge Jackson fan as a child, ‘Off the Wall’ being the first LP I owned. My father worked for a record label at the time, after leaving the music industry, and he used to bring home a lot of vinyl, some of it probably original pressings and collectors’ pieces, whereabout of it now unknown. He walked into the house one day with it in his hand and it landed straight on the turntable as all vinyl did back in those days. It was probably my older brother in control and although not a huge MJ fan he always appreciated music of all genres. By the time ‘Thriller’ was released in 1982 I was around 10 years old and around that time, like a lot of other young people my age I expect, I developed the adoration, adulation, and reverence for both the man he was and his musical talent, the feelings described by both Robson and Safechuck fondly in the documentary. Kids parties were all about dancing to Jackson’s music, trying to moonwalk in our socks across the kitchen lino and randomly screeching, “Eeeee-hee!” whilst attempting the now infamous leg-kick-crotch grabbing combo. It is no surprise to me that both accusers, despite the trauma they say they experienced when they were children, are still unable to completely detach themselves from the emotionally encapsulating infatuation of this enigmatic human being because despite the revelations that have surrounded him for many years, he still seems pretty untouchable.

I revisited the documentary more recently, triggered by an event that occurred at my daughter’s school. She came home and told me that during a period of recess where they play games, fool around and listen to music, the teacher had switched off a Jackson song rather abruptly which then sparked off a series of winks, nudges, and giggles from the other kids with the word “Paedo” being bandied around by some of the boys. This clearly piqued some interest in her curious pubescent mind and she began to interrogate me which I responded to as concisely and honestly as I possibly could, my own opinions being parked on the back burner so that she wasn’t unduly influenced in any way by them. She asked me if she could watch the documentary that had sparked off the ‘cancellation’ incident at school and I said that due to the graphic nature of some of the descriptors I didn’t think she was quite in the right place yet. However, a few months on from the original conversation, she had limped awkwardly through the whole sex education thing at school and we’d discussed (at length) at home the things they don’t tell you in the text books and judging by the conversations that were going on in the classroom, it appeared that most of the other kids were becoming well versed in the slang terms for both male and female genitalia and various ways of ungraciously describing copulation so there were no boundaries anymore and I was OK with that. My daughter has a real fascination with ‘true crime’ documentaries to begin with, so this obsession teamed with an understandable curiosity about Michael Jackson overall, we sat and watched both parts of Leaving Neverland together.

Of course, she was pretty stunned by these allegations as we all were and her initial reaction was that she had no choice but to believe them, as I did, and I still do, notwithstanding periods of time that I doubted the credibility of the material contained within the film, but I will get to that. However, she was still really curious about Jackson as a person so we embarked upon a real fact finding mission which included counter documentaries, interviews with the debunking theorists, both Bashir’s and Theroux’s interviews, body language experts, read numerous blogs categorically proving that some of the detail spoken by both Safechuck and Robson couldn’t possibly be true, interviews with Debbie Rowe and Lisa Marie Presley, studied FBI files, email exchanges between Wade and Joy Robson, Robson and the MJ Estate, Robson and his agent….the list goes on and on. We were exhausted, confused and uncomfortable. And then the jury went back out on the credibility of the whole narrative.

Source of material including Netflix for ‘Leaving Neverland’, YouTube or Amazon Prime for ‘Square One’, YouTube for ‘Living with Michael Jackson’. YouTube for ‘Lies of Neverland’.  YouTube for ‘The Man Behind the Dance Documentary 2019’

Part 2 – Memories

I felt incredibly emotional. I was angry that Robson and Safechuck along with their families had sucked me in and spat me back out again and I felt almost bereft. I started to google Dan Reed’s credentials to check that he was a genuine documentarian. I began to question the bigger picture. I said to my daughter, “Do you remember what you were doing at 5 years old because I can’t!?” and she replied no, not everything, but if something was traumatic enough then yes, I would remember it. And she was right. I started thinking back to events that had triggered me over the years and went as far back as being bullied in infant school. I was 4 years old, her name was Joanna, I remember the reason why, so clearly, she started bullying and harassing me every day, the things she said, the things she did, her hot breath on my face, I remember where I was in the tiny Church school playground whilst she pinned me up against the wall and repeated the same question over and over again. I remember crying to my mother that I didn’t want to go to school and finally, I remember never telling anyone. At least, not at first. But ask me about events surrounding those vividly disturbing memories and I wouldn’t be able to fulfil that request. I might make things up to pad out the story, remember things incorrectly, people, places, timelines, the list is endless and a complex maze of brain matter at work. It was 45 years ago; I am never going to remember each and every moment of my past life but what I will not forget are those flashbacks of heartache that ruined my first year at school. I then spiralled into a mental montage of torturous memories; getting run over at 7 years old (but I may have been 8…..I’m not entirely sure), being beaten up quite badly by a so-called friend when I was ‘roughly’ nine, starting high school and being picked on for being flat chested and many, many other things that I had long since packed away into the depths of my grey matter. I thought about more recent events like the awful childbirth I had, watching them switch off my father’s life support machine, other heart-rending family bereavements and realised that just because there were holes in the accusers’ recollections, it didn’t immediately warrant the entire story an out and out lie.

Let’s start with Safechuck’s account of Jackson abusing him in the train station, which didn’t fit within the timelines of the alleged abuse, and unfortunately threw the entire chronicle into disrepute and had me doubting that it was genuine. For those unfamiliar with the story, Safechuck claimed that after 1992 the abuse ended but timestamped ariel footage and planning application documents proved that the station wasn’t completed until 1994, two years after the alleged abuse had ceased. But I dug a little deeper and thought carefully about this. Safechuck was clear that he considered the abuse he suffered as a ‘loving relationship’. He, like Robson as a 7 year-old boy, was programmed to accept this as part and parcel of giving love to Jackson and not sexual abuse of a minor so I would imagine that this wouldn’t immediately offer the clarity of a stressful traumatic event thus rendering a lot of the lead up to it, the surrounding timelines and day to day recollections relying on memory triggers. By all accounts, Jackson was Safechuck’s first love. Imagine the realisation that your first love was, in fact, a paedophile who took advantage of you. This isn’t something you would willingly want to accept so I completely understand the sentiment behind Safechuck’s claims that he didn’t recognise it as abuse in the early days.  When you watch the documentary, there is a lot of video footage of Robson as small boy, Safechuck on stage and on tour with Jackson and also a fair amount taken at Neverland which undoubtedly enabled the memories to evolve. I would also assume that perhaps, maybe, both men were shown ariel or drone footage of Neverland to jog their memories and try and piece together the missing parts of the story so that it didn’t appear too fragmented. I agree that there are blatantly obvious methods used here facilitating a cinematically beautiful masterpiece, which it is, but there were some horrifically ugly revelations within that film that were particularly difficult to digest, it was only fair to provide some visual cushioning for the viewer. Dan Reed wanted to tell the story, and he succeeded, he wasn’t concocting a sordid, bodice ripping expose. With all this said, I believe Safechuck’s memory was muddled somewhat, and perhaps just assumed that the abuse had happened in the train station as well. I totally understand the efforts to clarify the truth here and quite rightly, the viewer needs complete transparency when faced with a one-sided documentary, but for me, this still doesn’t derail the entire narrative.

This leads me on to various malicious claims about Robson’s recollection of events. I read several email exchanges between Robson and his mother, Joy, in which he asks her many questions surrounding their first meeting with Jackson, their move to the US and, indeed, that now infamous first trip to Neverland in 1990 where Robson claims the abuse first took place. In Joy Robson’s deposition in 1993 in defence of Jackson in the Chandler case, she claimed that the ‘whole family’ left after the first weekend for the Grand Canyon yet she never actually singled out Wade as going with them. She was asked leading questions to which she largely answered “yes” to, but at no point, from the documentation I saw, did she mention Wade’s name specifically. In her 2016 deposition she re-iterated that the “whole family”, including her kids (plural), went to the Grand Canyon, but again, Wade’s name was never mentioned. She also claimed in 1993 that Wade was never left alone with Jackson until that year. I have to admit, this was one of those moments of discernment which almost propelled me back into the non-believer camp but on reading the email exchanges again between Joy and Wade, one really stuck out for me as evidence that Joy wasn’t being truthful in her 1993 deposition about Wade being left alone with Jackson in 1990. Wade asks her;

“That first trip to Neverland. You guys left for RV trip to Grand Canyon. About how long was I with Michael alone before I was back with you guys?” to which she replied,

“We left Monday and came back Friday.”

Why would he ask her that if it didn’t happen? There were also references to his wife Amanda’s reticence to welcome Joy back into their home which completely ties in with the interviews that took place in the documentary. Unless Robson is lying to his wife as well about the alleged abuse which is highly unlikely. Reasons for Joy to not be truthful? Well, she was under a lot of scrutiny at the time from both the press, her other children and Robson’s wife that it could, in fact, be her way of procuring some self-preservation and alleviate some of the guilt hoisted upon her for leaving her son alone with Jackson but I really don’t want to speculate too much. I believe she had been compiling journals over the years for the purpose of eventually penning a book of memoirs and Wade had asked her if it was OK to use some of the information from said journals, maybe to assist with his own book project or maybe to help him put together a case for the prosecution. When Joy Robson wrote back to Wade in one email she said,

“I will take a look at what I have written. I have several versions. I will let you know if I think it is something that will benefit you.”

This was leapt upon by the Jackson defenders as evidence that the entire story was a pack of fabricated fictitious lies and Joy was facilitating her son’s financially driven web of deceit. For starters, the published email trail had this response placed under the question about the trip to the Grand Canyon so it looks like she is referring to that but the timestamps places the above response BEFORE Wade asks her the question. “Something that will benefit you” simply implies that not every moment of her memoirs would help Wade’s case against the MJ estate. At least that’s how I read it. Nothing in these email exchanges proves beyond all reasonable doubt, that Wade Robson isn’t being truthful.

 If you want to read them for yourself, a quick Google search of ‘Joy Robson’s deposition’ and ‘Wade and Joy Robson’s email exchanges’ will point you at the PDF files.

Part 3 – Wade Robson’s inconsistencies

Of course, there were other inconsistencies in both Robson’s and Safechuck’s past depositions and current testimonies which hasn’t done them any favours. Robson had not been honest about the book deal he had been trying to procure and had hidden this from the MJ Estate but for obvious reasons, this would have been detrimental to his case so hiding it was probably a sensible move. His lawyer had also denied that he had any ties with AEG, the concert promoters, which was proven to be false as he was listed as choreographer on certain tours including Demi Lovato in 2011. But, and I’m not 100% confident with timelines here, the Jackson family had launched legal proceedings against AEG for negligence of the doctor, Conrad Murray, who was looking after Jackson at the time he passed away in 2009 of a drug overdose. AEG won the case eventually but with Robson having ties at the time to them would also look very suspicious that he was somehow in cahoots to try derail or deflect the Jackson family’s legal battle. All this, to me, is just part of building a prosecution portfolio where physical evidence is lacking and any slight chink in the armour of said prosecution could throw the whole case into disrepute.

Then there were the accusations that Robson was bitter because he was turned down for the MJ Cirque show which is not entirely accurate. In an email to one of the directors, he states that it was he who had dropped out of the project initially as he had already committed to another movie directing role but after the realisation that he couldn’t cope with the pressure he went back to Cirque almost pleading for another chance. So yes, he was cast aside eventually in favour of somebody else but reading between the lines he was initially considered and in one email from a talent agency they appear fairly confident that the gig would be his. He met with John Branca, the executor for MJ’s Estate, around the time an interview at the Grand Hyatt Hotel took place where he succinctly stated that he would be choreographing the project, so at this point maybe he was under the impression that he had been recruited for the job. So, I don’t believe this was Robson just ‘making things up’. John Branca stated in his deposition in 2016 that Robson had asked to meet with him and not the other way around yet in the email from the aforementioned talent agency in February 2011, John Branca had tried to contact Wade around Christmas 2010 but due to the birth of his child he had not called him back. The talent agent then tells him to contact Branca as he wanted to talk to him. I think being rejected for the role at Cirque, becoming a father and with Robson commencing therapy, this catalysed the deep-rooted time bomb of cognisance of what the last 20 years of his life had been all about and through his subsequent quest for justice he sought a cathartic resolution. Robson has also confirmed this is the case in various interviews and surveying the correspondence it’s highly believable.

It also frustrates me that Robson is portrayed as some sort of lothario, cheating on girlfriends and sleeping with other peoples. I don’t know an awful lot about Wade Robson, but thus far, my internet sleuthing has revealed a 7 year relationship with Brandi Jackson, niece of Michael, which started when they were about 10 years old and ultimately led to Brandi losing her virginity to him which was information overload as far as I’m concerned, rumours that he slept with Britney Spears and was the catalyst for Timberlake’s ‘Cry me a River’ and a brief, and from what I can gather, public relationship with Prince’s ex-wife who was only married to Prince for 4 years, most of them she claims, unhappily. He then met his now wife, Amanda Rodriguez, who he is still with currently at the age of 38, so almost 20 years. I’m sure, as a teenage boy, working amongst many females in the music industry, he wasn’t an angel but the fact that you barely read about any of these conquests just confirms my opinion that Robson is, in fact, a very private person.  The fact that he’d had a couple of high-profile contentious relationships, many bloggers leapt on this as proof that because of his ‘prowess’ with women he couldn’t have been sexually abused as a child but this proves absolutely nothing and 20 solid years with the same person speaks volumes about someone’s commitment, honesty and loyalty.

In further defence of Robson’s questionable switch in narrative over the years, I read an interesting article written by Jan Borgman, a teenager from Idaho who was abducted by her neighbour, Robert Berchtold, in the early 1970’s when she was just 12 years old. He had become a close family friend, trusted implicitly, amiable, likeable and charming and despite an ‘unusual’ fascination with Jan, her parents could foresee no wrongdoing unfolding. He groomed the family so efficiently that he, in his pursuit to get closer to Jan, persuaded both her God fearing, church going parents to engage in sexual relations with him, subsequently using these dirty secrets as blackmail to make them drop the kidnapping charges against him. He had used the same tactic to coerce all his young victims into having sex with him, telling them they had been abducted by aliens by playing them a bizarre series of beeps and distorted voices on a tape recorder, and that it was the only way they could save their parents and siblings from a terrible fate. In their own words, he was a complete “master of manipulation”. But even today she claims that she’s never felt as in love with any of the men that she’s been in relationships with as the kind of love she felt with Berchtold, her kidnapper, rapist and abuser. This all seems eerily reminiscent of how Jackson befriended the Robsons and the Safechucks and although still fails to clarify all the unknowns, it would explain why both men spoke so fondly of Jackson if he did, indeed, subject them to child sexual abuse at an impressionable age. If you feel dubious at all about the behaviour of either or both accusers and their mothers, then I implore you to watch the documentary ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’. Jan Borgman herself has compared the actions of John Berchtold to those of Michael Jackson and remains convinced that the accusations against him are genuine. In regard to the attacks on them that they are only chasing the money she said, “They have more to lose than gain”. And judging by the seething hatred for he and Safechuck all over social media, this is a stark and oppressive reality.

If you Google the phrase ‘Wade Robson Cirque Du Soleil’ and filter to images you will find copies of the email exchanges there. ‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ on Netflix – documentary about the kidnapping of Jan Borgman and the grooming of her family.

Part 4 – Michael Jackson, the person

The internet is teeming with bad press about Robson’s quest for financial recompense and justice yet when you look at polls, the vast majority of people still believe Jackson was guilty. If this is so, why don’t more people jump in and back he and Safechuck? I don’t want to really say too much about Michael Jackson as a person as this is really about the accusers, past and present, and their credibility, but what I will say is, during the Martin Bashir interview, Jackson made a huge mistake by denying that he had had more than two rhinoplasty operations in his life which sadly lead the viewer to believe that he either wished to remain in denial and disillusionment or he assumed that his loyal followers would believe every word he said beyond any doubt. His vehement rebuttal of the claims spoke volumes to me and when Robson claimed that Jackson had coached him over the phone in the lead up to both the 1993 and 2005 child molestation trials, using the phrase, “disgusting sexual stuff”, it seemed highly tenable that the same principles applied to this narrative. Either he was in complete self-denial or he was confident that Wade Robson had been groomed into submission or so reliant on his links with him to keep his career fluid. Uri Geller, who was one of Jackson’s spokespersons around 2003, who was ‘ditched’ as a friend by Jackson after he had set up the Martin Bashir interview, also admitted in an interview with Louis Theroux, that he had not done himself any favours by not admitting that he just, “Didn’t want to look like his father.” Louis Theroux, who was bitter about the fact that the interview had been handed to Bashir, then pursued interviews with Joe Jackson and Terry George, the British born entrepreneur, who claimed in 1993 that in 1979, Jackson masturbated on the other end of the phone to him when he was nineteen years old and George was just thirteen. Initially, during 2003, in an email to Theroux copying in Geller, George backed out of the interview stating that he didn’t feel it was appropriate, appearing as if Geller had advised against it, but then later on agreed to meet with him to discuss the allegations and the sensationalised tabloid stories that ensued. George was reluctant to dig it all up again, preferring to talk about the good memories he had of his brief friendship with Jackson which ended when he racked up a £300 phone bill and his parents cut the phone off. He played Theroux the tape recordings of his hotel room interviews with Jackson and smiled fondly throughout then went on to explain that somebody close to him with a “big mouth” had leaked the story to the media. However, George hasn’t denied the claims, he just feels bruised and bitter that less than 15 seconds of a phone conversation had muddied the priceless memories he harboured of his idol and one time friend. In 2009, just after Jackson’s death, George took to Twitter to defend Jackson’s memory and posted the following tweet;

“I know the Sunday papers will write sh** about me and Michael Jackson tomorrow. If they do, I’ll refute it on my Sky News interview at 9.10am.”

Terry George has been slammed online for not being a credible source of information and his dalliance with the British tabloids has left a nasty taste in the mouth of many Jackson fans around the globe. I don’t know if any of this masturbation story is true or not, but George has an impressive portfolio of properties, business ventures and yes, has been involved in running gay chat lines which he makes no secret of on his website. But in various internet articles this has somehow been used against him to his detriment. As an outwardly gay and successful businessman taking advantage of every opportunity he chanced upon to establish his modest fortune, why wouldn’t he get involved in a very lucrative premium rate number business aimed at the gay community? To somehow intertwine this with his story about Jackson is a pretty low shot.

During the 2002 now infamous Louis Theroux documentary, ‘Louis, Martin and Michael’, Theroux tried unsuccessfully to procure an interview with Jackson on one of his UK visits, instead, handing over $5,000 to Joe Jackson, Michael’s father, to try and speak to him instead. This wasn’t just car crash telly, this was a multi-vehicle pile-up. I don’t want to go into too much depth as you can watch the documentary for yourself on the BBC iPlayer, but it really did speak volumes as to what sort of person Jackson Senior was. He was openly homophobic to the point where the mere suggestion that his son’s orientation might not be as straightforward as he thought, he and his mule, Majestic the Magnificent (Michael’s personal magician) abruptly ended the interview in disgust. Theroux, disguising his trademark antagonistic interview style with trying to remain inclusive, got the reaction that he wanted and exposed Joe Jackson for the misogynistic, queer bashing bully that he was. At one point, the shaky camerawork that Theroux insisted was “broadcast standard”, captured Jackson Senior leering at a couple of young ladies at a shopping mall, eyeing them up and down as they walked away from him as a lion sizes up its next catch. It was stomach-churning stuff.  Incidentally, I am a HUGE Louis fan, I just wouldn’t want to be interviewed by him if I was a celebrity, particularly if I had something to hide. One could understand, after being exposed to this sort of upbringing and indeed, by his own admission, beat little Michael with a belt amongst other household objects, that the adult Michael might be seriously traumatised.

‘Louis, Martin and Michael’ BBC iPlayer.

Part 5 – ‘No smoke without fire’ – Other accusers

I remember years ago when I was just a child and my father, as mentioned previously, had left the music business and used to regale the family with tales about other pop stars and the awful scandalous lives they kept hidden from the glare of the paparazzi and the tabloids. He had a brief brush with fame in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, performing on a number of top twenty hits and appearances on ‘Ready, Steady Go’ and ‘Top of the Pops’, so he mixed in some dubious circles. I distinctly remember him mentioning one particular ‘wholesome’ pop star, taking young boys back to his dressing room. I also remember the lady who pierced my ears when I was around 8 years old repeat this story almost verbatim. We all took it with a good hearty pinch of salt until in the mid 2010’s when he was investigated for child molestation allegations to which he was found not guilty. It turned out that the accuser tried to blackmail him and other celebrities winging from the same era and therefore the accused came out of it looking like the victim. His house was raided, nothing was found and so he walked away, not necessarily as a ‘free man’ because the mud will always stick, but he certainly didn’t serve time for it. Now I don’t know how much truth bleeds from these rumours but I always, deep down, believe there are little fires smouldering everywhere.

But the credibility and believability of all the high-profile cases are dubious to say the least. There were many false witnesses, amongst them some of Neverland’s former employees including a lady called Adrian McManus who worked as a maid for Jackson between 1990 and 1994. She claims she saw Jackson showering naked with Robson when he was a little boy and talks about tubs of Vaseline and little boys underwear scattered everywhere around the ranch. This just sounds absurd to me and proves nothing, considering that the FBI raided the ranch and found no evidence at all. Do I honestly think Jackson would be that slack in leaving himself wide open to scrutiny if he was a cunning paedophile? But even if there was little boys underwear scattered everywhere, it may well have been amongst the other piles of discarded clothing that children have a delectable habit of just dumping off their bodies and leaving it where it falls and as a mother of a pre-teen, I can sympathise. Presumably, these same little boys washed and had a change of clothing with them when they visited, so even if this was fact it’s groundless. There were other disgruntled ex-staff members amongst the growing throng of accusers, known to the media as ‘The Neverland 5’, one had even taken a lie-detector test TWICE and passed. But their testimonies were torn apart by Jackson’s defence, and it was clear that despite the fact they may have been treated poorly during their employ, they were blatantly out for revenge.

Jordan Chandler, one of the original accusers in 1993, was clearly being coerced by his family, particularly his biological father, Evan Chandler who was of questionable character to say the least. As a failed dentist, he had access to a number of drugs, one being Sodium Amytal, otherwise known as, ‘The truth serum’ which is a little misleading as it has been suggested that it can actually create false memories which could possibly manifest for some time after the initial dose. It has been alleged that before Jordan Chandler had made any accusations against Jackson, his father Evan had administered this drug as part of a routine dental procedure and under some kind of coercive hypnosis, had ‘created’ some fabricated memories of sexual abuse whilst sharing the pop star’s bed. Although this sounds risky and far-fetched, it’s a clear-cut possibility bearing in mind Evan’s history. Ultimately it was Jackson’s insurers who took the decision to settle out of court and paid something like $22m in compensation. It might be a good time to point out that this wasn’t Jackson’s decision to settle out of court and in no way was it ever an admission of guilt. In 1994, Jordan Chandler emancipated himself from his parents and $15m was placed into trust for him, payable when he turned 18. The rest was distributed to his parents and the legal team. He had until that time to change his mind and he didn’t, instead falling off the radar and out of the public eye, changing his identity and living as far away from his old life as possible.

There was one female accuser I chanced upon whilst scouring the internet for information who came forward in 2016 with copies of love letters allegedly written to her by Jackson and copies of cheques paid to her over the course of a few years, purported to be ‘hush money’, to the tune of around $900k. She had engaged the services of Robson and Safechuck’s lawyer Vince Finaldi and remained anonymous, adopting the ‘Jane Doe’ moniker. He had allegedly abused her between the ages of 13 and 15 and she supposedly had plenty of evidence including a photograph of her with Jackson but with her face blacked out. Originally, I agreed with the MJ fans analysis of the handwriting on the notes looking like it was faked and something about him being a bit particular about his spelling but I decided to compare to his other handwritten notes and could see definite similarities such as words spelt incorrectly, grammar not always being on point and what struck me most was the mixing of lower and upper case letters. These things are constant throughout all of Jackson’s scrawlings including originals that had been auctioned off. She then withdrew the charges with no explanation a few months later but rumours are that either she was paid off for her silence ‘again’, the evidence was all proven to be counterfeit or she just didn’t want to go through the same roughhousing as the other victims. Somebody else had pointed out that if she had banked the cheques then she wouldn’t have copies of them but I’m assuming these were produced by the recipient’s bank against records of the physical transactions, otherwise there really was nothing to produce in court. I haven’t read all the ins and outs of the case and the court transcripts are disjointed but the gist of it is that he tried to have intercourse with her whilst still a juvenile and she bled so he stopped which is reminiscent of Robson’s and Safechuck’s stories. As far as the handwriting goes, as the evidence wasn’t produced until 2016, there was a plethora of internet images available to produce a believable fake from and the photograph does look shoddily photoshopped but as she is no longer pressing charges then I guess we will never know the truth.

Another interesting perspective came from the actor, Corey Feldman, who had previously tried to expose some Hollywood bigwigs for sexually abusing him but as a good friend of Jackson’s, defended him and swears he didn’t touch him. He posted many tweets following on from the Neverland documentary in defence of Jackson and vehemently continued to stand up for him during TV interviews. He has since changed his stance somewhat and claims that he can no longer defend him as on reflection, he believes Jackson’s behaviour towards him could have been a grooming tactic but didn’t go any further because maybe he just ‘wasn’t his pick’. Whilst he still defends the pop star to date because he didn’t do anything to him personally, he maintains that we should still listen to what is being said by other accusers. This is quite the revelation.

I have to mention Jimmy Saville here when we look at profiling of convicted paedophiles and although he was accused several times throughout his career of improper behaviour towards a minor, evidence mysteriously disappeared and reeked of police corruption. But let’s look at how he got away with it for so long, in plain sight, and right under the noses of both the public and the establishments he volunteered at just to get close to children. As we all know, he raised an awful lot of money for charity, over £40m in fact, and when he died the £5m he left was supposed to be distributed to a multitude of charities he represented. However, as more and more victims came forward after he died the fund started to dwindle, there was less and less left in the pot for these causes. For many years he used his fundraising to cover up his sexual abuse of young children, threatening various whistle-blowers that if they were to run stories about him the funding would be pulled. So, it was buried for years, the moral dilemma being how do you decide who is more important, the poor patients dying in hospitals or the innocent victims of sexual abuse? If you ask me, the people who knew about it and did nothing should be held accountable for facilitating his paedophilia which is, in fact, what both Robson and Safechuck are attempting to do via their court battles with the MJ Estate. The safeguarding was devastatingly lacking in all cases and the facilitators had every opportunity to pull the plug on it and didn’t for financial reasons. Also, bear in mind that many of these victims came forward after Saville died and sought compensation but nobody ever crucifies them for that because they accept that there are valid reasons why they held back. Discovering that Saville was who he was caste an incredibly dark shadow over our childhoods, and it was all carried out right in front of our very eyes.

Google ‘Jane Doe Jackson accuser’ and filter to images for copies of evidence. Also Google ‘Michael Jackson handwriting’ and filter to images for a comparison. Take a look at the Saville articles as well to see how the history of his child abuse played out

Part 6 – My conclusion

I can’t lie, this has been a complete emotional tempest for me and I’m half regretting dedicating so much time and effort to it but the other half of me is determined to make some sense of the commotion that revisiting this documentary caused in my conscience. So in the chapter I am going to offer you, the reader, my summation of the subject matter, the people involved and what I think after hours and hours of research. I know I haven’t captured everything, and I know some of it is scattered, but I’m not a professional scribe and I can barely hold a pen but I have written this after careful consideration and deliberation.

To begin with I want to talk about Robson and Safechuck and how I feel about their story now that I have analysed each of the inconsistencies that arose from the documentary. The louder the MJ defenders scream, “LIAR!”  the harder it is to see past that. Yes, they both lied, as people do all the time to protect loved ones, their own self-interest or because they didn’t know what else to do. Do you see abused children holding hands with and gazing lovingly into the eyes of their abuser? Ask Jan Borgman about that and there’s your answer. Are they after ‘easy money’? 8 years or so of torturous court cases, a complete media frenzy, death threats against them and their families and the risk that they may never work again is hardly easy. In addition to this, Jackson was $500m in debt when he died so any money paid out would presumably come from assets or insurers (I’m not a forensic accountant) and not from Jackson’s pocket. Robson has potentially experienced millions in lost income and will probably never have the success he had has a young man again. From what I’ve seen in interviews and on social media he is a very intelligent, articulate, talented man as well as being a dedicated husband and father, trying to make a living as and how he can. He worked his butt off from the age of 14 when he started choreographing some huge names in the pop industry and nobody can deny that the man can dance. If he has made all this up, fabricated every word and lied for financial gain then he is the devil incarnate and I just can’t comprehend that as an option. If he and Safechuck have concocted a set of untruths between them then they have either involved their entire families in the maze of deceit or they’re duping them as well and living a huge, gigantic lie, one which they know they will have to take to the grave with them as they can never relax. Is all the money in the World worth living your life in fear of what disgruntled MJ supporters may do to you? Would YOU do that? Would you put you families through that? Your loved ones, your parents…your children?? They have both dedicated a lot of time and effort into helping victims of CSA and I don’t believe the rumours that the Robson’s charity that was set up in Maui is just a funnel to line their pockets. Being under intense scrutiny this really isn’t something that would be missed by the IRS. I feel I have carried out enough due diligence to conclude that they are telling the truth but unfortunately, we will probably never know for sure but they both have my support.

As for the man himself, this is very hard for me. I have had to separate the man from his music (as the saying goes) because I could never not have Michael Jackson in my life. I have sat and watched some of his classic ground-breaking music videos and they still send shivers down my spine. I have no doubt that he was a beautiful, kind and loving individual who loved children, perhaps, not always the right way. He was an incredible human being and brought joy to many people’s lives and still does to a degree and I can totally sympathise with the fans refuting all claims against him as being untrue. It breaks my heart watching him in interviews, desperately wanting to believe that he wasn’t capable of these things but after a complete moral war with myself I just can’t carry it through. He told lies himself, denied things that were glaringly, blatantly obvious like the plastic surgery denials and trying to fool us into thinking his children were biologically his. Of course, we now know that he employed a selection of sperm donors, but nobody is really sure who he eventually used. The once child actor, Mark Lester, claims that Paris looks a lot like his daughter though. Through all his claims of loyalty and friendship to Jackson, I found this statement a bit vulgar and desperately seeking attention post his death. But anyway, I digress. On his parenting skills I think he tried his best to give his children some kind of childhood and once he stopped running from the media, living his nomadic lifestyle, there really was no better place than Neverland to live that dream. It was far from conventional, and I feel a little sad for them that they were eventually separated from their biological mothers, but he seemed to absolutely worship them so really, I can’t chastise him too much.

But was he a paedophile, using his position of power to consciously entice, groom and manipulate children into having sexual relations with him? I think, yes and no. I think all his relationships with other people’s children were inappropriate, but I also believe there were a specific few who he ‘chose’ for various reasons. When you look at Robson, Safechuck and indeed Jordan Chandler when they were young boys they were very good looking (and still are), particularly little Wade who absolutely idolised him in every way possible. The way he dressed, his crazy perms, his dance moves……everything. He was the obvious choice for Jackson, he would never ‘tell’. He was hook, line and sinker. And then you look at little James, the perfect looking child, gazing lovingly into his eyes and exuding adoration, he too was far too invested in their relationship to blow cover. But I don’t think Jackson was involved in some kind of undercover paedophile ring and in his mind, he didn’t see it as abnormal, despite what the law says. Paedophilia is, in no uncertain terms, a sexual orientation and I believe he felt that it was his way of showing his love. I also believe he was into women as well, maybe even adult men, in fact, he may well have been the classic example of ‘pansexual’. I think I agree wholeheartedly with Dan Reed’s summation of what he believed to be true, but if this is the case, then Jackson was more dangerous than any of us could ever have perceived. I watched a few videos of him visiting sick children in a hospital and the way he ‘handled’ them was exactly as Robson had described Jackson’s handling of him leading up to the alleged abuse. The caressing of their cheeks, the stroking of their heads, the total ‘hands on’ approach that you just wouldn’t get away with these days. I don’t believe there was any malice in it and when you hear people questioning why you would appear so happy with your ‘so called’ abuser they seem to forget that none of this was ever violent. There were no forced rapes, and as all stories corroborate, he stopped when he was asked. If you do watch the Jan Borgman film, you’ll hear that Berchtold also did this. He didn’t force himself on anyone. But grooming them into it is even more abhorrent.

I believe Jackson wanted to go when he did. The facts surrounding his death were contentious. Why an experienced doctor would try and resuscitate somebody on a soft bed and not on a hard surface and then wait a considerable amount of time before calling paramedics was just suspicious. But anyway, perhaps best left for further blogs.

I realise that some people will agree with this, and some people will be triggered, but this is only speculation gathered around hard facts. But I am concerned that this constant vilification of the accusers will prevent others from coming forward, not just in this case, and force them to live in the shadows of their traumatic memories.  If anybody reading this has ever been a victim of CSA……please, please reach out as you are not alone. I sincerely hope that Dan Reed is successful in making the follow up documentary as I think there is so much still unseen and unsaid and I hope Wade, James and any other victims of CSA find the peace that they deserve.

The End